Her tears, her shivering words, the utter passion of misery and tenderness that made the action almost like the slaying of a living creature, so stupefied and fascinated Leonard that for a moment he could neither move nor speak. When he recovered himself he ran to the foot of the stairs and called her. “Sappha! Sappha!” he cried. “Sappha, come back to me, I have something to tell you.” But she was gone. A slight flutter of her white gown as she turned the last angle was all he saw; and if she heard his appeal she did not answer it. For a few minutes he waited, but the laughter of the negroes in the kitchen, coming faintly through the baize-lined doors, was the only sound he heard. Then he returned to the parlour and carefully gathered, one by one, the torn leaves. The last note Sappha had sent him was in his pocket book. He placed them between the sheets and, shutting them in the book, put it in his breast. What was he so still for? What had he done? What had come to him? Blast, or blight, or fire, or fever? He picked up the torn rose leaves as if they were bits of his heart, and the door clashed behind him and seemed to shake the very foundations of his life. He knew that he was walking, but his heart hung heavy at his feet. All he loved was behind him--he was drifting, drifting into a darkness where love and joy would never again find him. Oh, it is only “---- the Lord above, He only knows the strength of Love; He only knows, and He only can, The root of Love that is in a man.” CHAPTER NINE _The Reproof of the Sword_ Leonard’s suffering was very great, but Sappha’s was still greater. Wounded love, injustice, and disappointment can inflict mental distress that has no parallel in physical pain, but with Sappha’s misery was mingled the intolerable drop of remorse for her hasty passion. Now that all was over, now that Leonard had gone away forever, there came to her the clearest conviction that she had done him a great wrong. She remembered that she had not even given him an opportunity to explain circumstances--she had met him with passionate reproaches and flung his love gift, torn and mutilated, at his feet. After that shameful, piteous rejection what could Leonard do but go away? It was an act for which there could be no apology and no forgiveness. She cried out with the anguish this cruel, hopeless reflection caused her; and had Leonard been really present she would have fallen at his feet in an agony of love and repentance.